The Spanish Privateer

Early 1600s. (Briefly) Spain, The Azores islands (Portugal), Cuba, Mexico (part of “New Spain”), and various areas of the Atlantic Ocean. Carlota escapes from being forced to marry a man three times her age by joining a Spanish privateer ship. However, she’s completely inexperienced and has to quickly learn the ways of life at sea. [u]Info[/u] • Hetero romance. Female protagonist, 3 romanceable men. • 3 good endings, several bad and alternate endings. • No sex scenes or descriptions. [u]Praises[/u] • Accessibility: OpenDyslexic font. Font size can be increased. Light and dark contrast can be adjusted. • Most CGs and background art are pretty. CG gallery available. • Demonstrates the absolutely nightmarish kind of lives women had to deal with in the time period. • Gives a bit of cultural and historical info on Spain, Portugal, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and western Europe for that time period. • Flint’s route reveals how disgustingly widespread the African slave trade was throughout Europe and how [i]rarely[/i] slave ships could be intercepted to liberate said slaves. • Lark’s route reminds us of the pure evil involved with colonization, spec…

The Spanish Privateer gives a story about Carlota, an 18-year-old who decided to run away from her arranged marriage and join a privateer ship in hopes for freedom. I had my eye for this game for a while and while it took me a while to get to play it, I can say it did not fail my expectations. This game provides you a nice, interesting setting that gives us a lot of background on certain aspects of places in the 17th century that was touched by the Spanish conquest, also a varied amount of side characters (especially in Rico's route) that were nice to see. Each route had a nice amount of chemistry between Carlotta and the LIs, and it was nice to see her grow and change in each route, she can be mean, and make mistakes but we can see why the LIs fall for her, it was also interesting seeing the backstories for Rico, Flint, and Lark, the game had different endings and I liked using the guide to unlock them (it's very point-based). Overall I do recommend giving this game a try.

The game frames itself as a story about an inexperienced young woman earning her place on a pirate ship through competence and determination. In practice, however, much of the hostility Carlota faces is gendered violence that the narrative either excuses or reframes as harmless misunderstanding. Flint shoves Carlota to the deck to order her to clean it. It’s described as her being on her knees in front of him. This is an action that makes little sense as mere roughness, since there is no indication he would treat a new male crewmate the same way. He did it BECAUSE she’s a woman. Lark, meanwhile, gets drunk and decides that collapsing onto her and sleeping on top of her is acceptable behavior. Although Carlota knees him in the crotch, the incident is brushed aside. Like this is just what she’s got to deal with for coming on board a pirate ship, ignoring that I’m actually supposed to like Lark for a romance interest? Why does every bet on the ship have her KISSING the men as the prize? Gross. There is repeated physical boundary-crossing that the narrative refuses to interrogate. Like point blank, screw Flint for being violent and Lark for being rapey. The earlier insistence that C…

I don't write reviews, but I must say it's a nice game, even though I'm not a fan of this genre. It's just strange how those NSFW games are pushed into your face, while a game like this is just left buried and forgotten. Speaks volumes about our society, I guess.

I stumbled upon this game during a demo festival a long time ago. I quite liked this game at that time and thought it had great potential. However, what a disappointment I had when I finally bought it! Not because it was bad; on the contrary, it's a really excellent game (just as I imagined it would be) with pleasant drawings, a good story, and nuanced characters. Yet, for some reason, the game went unnoticed by the general public (even within its genre), and this truly saddens me. [u]Maybe if this game was translated into other languages, it would be much more appreciated. [/u]

A great story with loveable characters, and with a bonus being that it is set in an historically accurate world. The banter is great, it is "adult" in a way that NSFW topics are not glossed over (but don't fully go into detail as a gore heavy or sexually explicit VN would). I also appreciate the word glossary, photo gallery and friendship/romance tracker the game has. The only downside to this VN is that it follows a "point" system to get good endings (I know this is common but admittedly became a bit frustrating for me during gameplay), and that some characters routes are longer and dive way more into the MC's personality than others. However, overall I think this game is really unique, has wonderful writing, interesting love interests and side characters, and nice art, with the bonus being the historically accurate world and the attention to detail of that history incorporated into the plot. 8.5/10 Recommend.